Secret Identity
by Merlin Missy
Summary: Seven characters, seven stories.


Secret Identity  
a Justice League story  
by Merlin Missy  
copyright 2005  
PG-13

Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything.

Summary: Seven characters, seven stories.

Author's Note: I would like to state that there is no significance to the date of this posting. It is a complete astronomical coincidence coupled with a mostly effective time recording system that dictates certain "dates" fall every 365.25 revolutions of this planet. No inference should thus be made to the contrary to the chosen publication date of this story and any other coincidentally similar events with the same so-called "date."

Nope. No reason for today at all.

(Secret message to You Know Who: See? Not a word.)

* * *

Secret Identity: Clark 

A cacophony jars him from sleep._An alarm? An alert? _No, a car horn outside his building, and he knows where he is.

Another dream, Van-El again, merges with the gloom of his darkened apartment and he doesn't know who he is for another precious, terrifying second. Then he is fully awake, and he still doesn't know. Sometimes he thinks he's an alien pretending to be a journalist; some nights he wonders if he's a farmer caught in delusions of being a hero.

He considers his mirror in black and white. At least he knows who he will not be.

* * *

Secret Identity: Wally 

Run run run, feel the smooth pressure of the station floors beneath his feet, gravity isn't like back on Earth not quite, and so he can run that touch faster and it's all about the wind moving past his face, he saw this special once about sharks when there was nothing on but the National Geographic channel and there were no naked chicks but the sharks were cool and need the water moving past their gills to breathe and yeah, the wind's just like that, blowing past him like a hot fast dream and he runs and runs to breathe.

* * *

Secret Identity: J'onn 

A handful of aliens rattle about the Watchtower, including two who tried to take over the planet, and yet J'onn is the one the humans fear. He opens his mind to them, is learning not to recoil at the revulsion he reads.

He could change. He could alter his appearance and walk among them, telling them his name or not as he chooses.

But he remembers the tests, remembers the shocks and the probes as scientists wearing human faces forced him to change and change and change.

He will not sully his shape with that form, not for their comfort.

* * *

Secret Identity: Shayera 

Humans are not the only species who are creative in their means of torturing one another. Thanagarians are quite inventive in their punishments.

There is a particular punishment, doled out for certain crimes. The guilty party's wings are bound and he or she is cast out from a tower far above the clouds. The higher the tower, the longer the fall and the time spent thinking about one's sins. Legend says some find religion on the way down, but the hard ground believes only in itself.

Shayera thinks she knows how it must feel to step off the perch.

* * *

Secret Identity: John 

"Stop it."

"What?"

"Thinking about him. Rex."

"Really not your business."

"It's my business if you get me killed because you're banking on not dying."

"I can't help it. I met him."

"And now you're thinking about the future."

"Yeah."

"Imagining your wedding. Wondering how she'll tell you."

"Yeah."

"Picturing the six months of bedrest she'll be on. The fight where we lose J'onn because she's not there. How she'll start hemorrhaging during the birth and die that day."

"What? No! That's not ... You don't know that's what's going to happen."

"You can't act as though you know it won't."

* * *

Secret Identity: Diana 

The swell and swoop of Diana's changing body cuts a proud figure yet, even as she grumblingly accedes to take monitor duties in lieu of battles. Another three months, they promise.

Five, Shayera chides. She has played a jealous compatriot, whose own confinement nearly killed her and her son.

Diana has known from the beginning she too carries a male. None have asked her directly his father's name. Batman has not been seen nor heard from in over a year. They assume. She allows them their gossip, knows they cannot comprehend.

She is immortal, but her son shall be divine.

* * *

Secret Identity: Bruce 

Above all else, he despises vulnerability in himself. So when Clark and Diana coax from him the heart's desire that could have killed them all, he feels a great shame. He should have been stronger.

When Mordred sweeps across the world with his kingdom, and Bruce cannot fly, cannot fight, cannot keep up, he takes the only position he can, leading the other three — four, counting Etrigan — into battle. And still he is ashamed.

The truth is something only his closest associates know: for all intents and purposes, he has always been that eight year old wearing that tiny cowl.


End file.
